OHS and OJMCHE Brown Bag Lecture-
Preaching Politics in the Progressive Era: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in Portland, Oregon, 1900-1906

FREE EVENT

Rabbi Stephen S. Wise (1874-1949) first attracted public attention at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the outspoken minister of New York City’s venerable Bnai Jeshurun Congregation. In 1900, at the invitation of a group of elite Jewish merchants, lawyers, and politicians in the Pacific Northwest, Wise left New York to assume the pulpit of Portland’s Beth Israel Congregation. His move was a chance to strike out on his own and pursue a variety of liberal and Progressive causes.

In Portland, Wise made common cause with a broad spectrum of citizen activists. In the space of just a few years, he garnered a reputation as a vociferous opponent of prostitution as well as forced prostitution, a champion of woman suffrage, an advocate of child labor protections and reforming the region’s juvenile punishment system, and a defender of the rights of workers (including Chinese immigrants) in the shipyard, timber, fishing, and railway industries. He also stood out as the region’s most prominent Jewish and Zionist spokesman. This talk will examine Wise’s impact on the region and the way his Portland years shaped his rise as a significant American Jewish leader.